Greg Beale’s The Temple and the Church’s Mission is an exciting book and crucially important for understanding what the purpose of the temple was in God’s grand plan. Beale takes us carefully through the cosmic symbolism of temples in the Ancient Near East, which lays the foundations for the heart of his book. From there he argues that Eden was a cosmic temple and that from the time of Adam, the temple in all its various forms (the garden-sanctuary in Eden, the tabernacle, the temple) was designed to expand to fill the whole earth. This is fulfilled in Christ and reminds the Church today (the temple of the Holy Spirit) that one of its primary functions is to fill the earth. One day, in the New Creation there will be a “garden-like city”, the new Jerusalem, sharing many of the features and hallmarks of the earlier temples.